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When the comments on a Mail news story on the trailer are just 'I won't see a woke Bond movie' I see people who aren't speaking from an informed point of view. There have been other double O agents before, there have been characters who have butted up against Bond before- neither are a change to the world of Bond. They're outraged by something, I am attempting to understand what that source of outrage is and I don't think it's that Bond's world has changed because he's quit his job.
That's not fair at all- just look at the posts in this thread from the latter half of p57 a couple of days ago: no-one is talking that way at all. Someone was saying they don't like Nomi's character as shown in the trailer and a few of us were saying that she wasn't supposed to be liked because what we've seen of her has her in an antagonistic role to Bond: that's the character's role in the trailer. I would say that's in no way similar to accusing anyone of being at a Trump rally. So when you say I don't differentiate between the two I think you're not looking at the whole picture and being slightly reductive: it's not that simple.
This is more or less what I'm on about. It's more than a little ridiculous that recent Ghostbusters and Star Wars films have been fuel for hysterical culture wars. And sadly, Bond is next.
Disney does some checklist-style diversity casting, making John Boyega front and center in the Western market, shrinking his image in the Chinese market, and ultimately making him a hapless comic relief character in the actual films. Only white guys Adam Driver and Mark Hamill, not Daisy Ridley, get much to work with in the screenplays, to my disappointment (to say nothing of John Boyega's!). And this cynicism from the studio leads to blanket statements about people who dislike the films being bigots of some variety. And some of those people who consider themselves not to be bigots get angry back. (And of course the actual bigots are always angry anyway) And the press loves it. You get to write about the huge number of bigots out there.
Some outlets write glowing articles about "new 007" Lashana Lynch, and others write headlines to make their readers think she's literally replacing Daniel Craig. Lots of hits, lots of grumpy people. And then you get to write articles about all the grumpy people.
Another issue: I can remember a time when people had certain expectations for women or people of color in film roles. Sometimes, but not always, the woman would need rescuing at some point, and the black guy was unlikely to survive to the final reel. These critiques were progressive. Now, expectations are different. Sometimes, but not always, the woman or black guy will be almost entirely noble and rather more competent than may be plausible. But making the critique is hardly considered progressive, and is even unacceptable to some. But these new expectations can feed concerns some may have about Nomi (which I don't personally share), as one example. And then you get to talk about all the bigots.
There was a time in between (I think) where the quality of diversity in casting was in some ways better, even if the quantity was insufficient. Will Smith was the biggest movie star on Earth for a while, and I don't think anyone was very concerned about Halle Berry in DAD (at least before seeing the film!). Hopefully everybody will calm down a bit eventually, and we'll have got through this messiness with a wider range of people in our films and series.
So yes, it's fine to not like the look of Nomi at the moment, because the trailers are presenting her as someone who is antagonistic towards Bond, just as Mallory initially appeared to be in SF. But Safin wants to kill Bond, so we should probably all dislike him more! :)
I think this is a safe bet, for sure.
And I don't look for this stuff. The corporate memo-style checklist casting of Rogue One only stood out to me once I saw the Asian character doing martial arts stuff.
As for SF, I'm not so sure Eve would have played out the same way if it were a newer film (though I do think EON is somewhat less prone to this kind of stuff). And Mallory....well, if he showed up in the trailer in a sports car with lowered sunglasses and talked about shooting Bond, I would assume he would be an object of mockery and worse within the film. I do not assume that of Nomi! Of course, you're free to feel that my assumptions are wrong, but I can't see how they're misplaced.
I see what you're saying, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I think another difference between now and ten years ago is that the doors were a bit more open with regard to what the character may end up being. She's certainly not going to accidentally shoot Bond and decide secretary work is more her bag!
Or put it this way: if instead of Nomi, the new 00 was a guy called Norman, and he acted like a jerkoff in the trailer, nobody would have any doubt that Bond can humiliate the living daylights out of him in the film. With Nomi, that's extremely unlikely.
Edit: it's always necessary to reiterate one's prefaces, so again, I'm not concerned about Nomi's character, but I have some amount of sympathy for people with issues. And I'm not at all sure we're meant to dislike her in any way in these trailers, but without context, people shouldn't get quite so worked up. As I suggested somewhere earlier, EON isn't going to have any character piss all over Bond for 163 minutes.
Bond has retired. Either his number or his intangible position as M's go to 00-field agent has been taken up by Nomi. A potentially catastrophic situation arises. Bond has to come out of retirement to save the day. Either together with Nomi or on his own, he defeats the villain and saves the world (and possibly gets the girl; unclear about that one).
To me (and I am of course as biased in my own ways as everyone else) there is absolutely nothing to indicate that James Bond as played by Danial Craig isn't the hero of this film. I would be annoyed if they had made a film where Craig suddenly is part of the Scooby Gang and all he does is chat with Blofeld, while Nomi is the actual main character. I don't think I have seen any indication that this is the case. Quite the contrary: It very much seems like he is the one who has to clean up everybody else's mess and save the world.
Indeed, you're right about all of this, but part of me, a big part, would have no problem watching Bond talk to Blofeld for the whole movie. :))
I was kind of imprecise there: I wouldn't mind that as a film. I mean, I also want a TV series about the MI6 office drones or an "Old Bond" where Brosnan comes back. I also in principle wouldn't mind a film with Nomi as the main character. But not after this marketing campaign and what we know about the film.
If the epic conclusion of the Craig-era !!!1!!11 was this, I wouldn't be happy.
But yeah, Bond is being called into action to save the world, and should it be any wonder that Nomi may display some insecurity and bravado given that the powers that be evidently think her services won't quite be enough?
As I say, maybe you're just looking for this though and it's a self-fufiling prophecy. As I also say: there are plenty of hyper-competent characters in movies (hence my example of Mallory), that some of them are played by black actors isn't necessarily a sign of anything. Some people would say the new (black) Captain America seems incredibly perfect and wise in every way, but maybe the previous one was like that too.
Well, to be fair though, one person's imagination isn't really proof of anything.
I can't follow your thinking there. Obviously if it were Fiennes dressed up like that he'd look silly, but another superspy threatening to shoot Bond... I don't see why that would be an object of mockery.
Well obviously not because that's already happened: and I'm not just being pedantic- they're not going to repeat beats like that even in general terms. Even if she were a white guy they're not going to have him decide to leave the field and take a desk job.
I just ask to consider for a moment, without dismissing it out of hand, that you may be looking for this stuff and allow the casting to colour your preconceptions.
The point of a trailer in many ways is to show our hero at crisis point: 'how will he get out of this one? Tune in to find out!' Hence his girlfriend betrays him, there's some guy out to kill him, the world is about to be destroyed, there's some cocky young agent trying to replace him. Now, audiences are familiar with how movies work so we get a few snatches of Nomi working with Bond and hints that it's a buddy cop relationship which will evolve, which is fine; but the main drive of how we're left is that there's this bunch of people being antagonists to Bond and the situation in the movie is how he'll react/overcome that. So I think it's fine for someone to feel they don't like her, because she's not presented as Bond's friend in what we've been given so far.
This is me actually arguing on behalf of people who feel they dislike her, incidentally- even though apparently I always equate disliking her with being the devil according to some folk ;)
I don't look for this stuff. But in the course of watching a film/series, one often makes predictions about what's going to happen based on other stories one has seen, and you often notice tropes. I may think you're just missing the tropes, perhaps by some kind of choice. You may think I'm only imagining the tropes, perhaps by some type of choice. Someone could tell me that PoC characters in the 1980s weren't handled any differently than the white characters, and I'm just looking for it. I'm sure black people commenting on how often black characters die early were sometimes told that.
I'm afraid I don't know much about Captain America! And I generally tend to find what I've called hypercompetence more along gender lines anyway. Mallory too, I hadn't regarded as unusally skilled at anything in Skyfall. In the current run, Bond himself has even lost a fair amount of it!
I'm not saying any of these blockbusters are woke or whatever, and anyone who is is probably being a bit silly. Big movie studios aren't interested in that stuff. I don't think I've ever seen a "woke blockbuster". I have seen plenty of woke commentary (and hysterical opposition from the other side) surrounding these sometimes-cynical blockbusters, though. And I do think this back-and-forth has an effect on how characters are written, generally in the direction of making them more shallow than they could be. It's fine for us to disagree, but I would be surprised to find any female character in a new movie having the arc of Saunders in TLD. And on the other side, I agree that more silly people would freak out about M's "sexist misogynist dinosaur" speech if it were in a new movie. (And just as in 1995, I don't think many people would take note of the fact that M is written as a boss who has screwed up the only job we've seen her do, and the "sexist" speech comes as a retort to Bond pointing that out--an ill-conceived beat more suited to an anti-feminist film. All very superficial stuff, this)
Well, it's probably a bee in my bonnet, but I think anyone would look silly doing that. I'm glad it's her and not Bond!
Nope, I'm saying plenty of other characters have those skills too. Maybe the tropes aren't as defined by gender/race as you think they are.
Why do you think other people weren't distracted by there being an Asian character in Star Wars? Perhaps it wasn't because they made a choice or are blind to it, and you're not objectively right about it being a bad thing.
As I said, Mallory is a character who turns up and turns out to be surprisingly virtuous, wise and perfect despite initially seeming to be an antagonist: we even get a shot of Tanner gazing lovingly at him in SF. He's shown to be brave, too. Maybe you're choosing not to see that, but I would say that a character like that turning up in a Bond film and replacing a well-loved character would be an example of just what you're talking about. But as he happens to be played by a white actor or a man, it's not seen as part of some terrible trend, just a character in a film. If Mallory was a woman, bearing in mind the character makes no mistakes, takes a bullet and picks up a gun, would that be seen as a sign of a perfect female 'kick-ass' character trope?
Do you mean specifically killed off? Because otherwise I think that's how Nomi's story is shaping up: initial antagonist who Bond comes to respect (obviously that's a very shallow and superficial 'arc' in TLD, I would expect Nomi's greater screentime to flesh that out a bit).
Well, if someone doesn't think having a single Asian character who is a martial arts pro is a trope, I guess that's fine. Or is someone thinks uncommonly wide diversity still led by a white hero doesn't reflect anything, that's fine. Or again, if someone thinks people of color were handled equally in the 1970s and 1980s because they themselves didn't notice anything, whatever.
Sorry, I just don't see Mallory doing anything special. I wouldn't make any special note of a female Mallory character either.
No, I mean doing kind of a crap job and getting shown up and embarrassed by Bond before the mutual respect happens. Perhaps you think Nomi could go through this too, and we just disagree. It's no problem!
And perhaps women complaining about all the doting housewife roles just have some special motivation to see that and not the counter-examples.
You phrase that in such a way to suggest that they'd be wrong to think that though.
There's really not only one correct way to see things.
If you don't think he displays wisdom, bravery and extreme competence, earning the other characters' respect, then neither does Nomi. They're all just characters doing their jobs. There's nothing to worry about here.
Yeah I think that's pretty likely to be honest. She's supposed to be new, I would be very surprised if Bond doesn't end up teaching her something or indeed saving her at the end. I don't think it'll be quite as simplistic as Wai Lin suddenly getting tied to a missile, but if he doesn't carry out the main winning move I'd be surprised.
Indeed! And if you ask random people how good they are at martial arts, I suspect one demographic would be more likely to be justifiably irritated by your question than others, because tropes and stereotypes exist. Though I admit that not seeing them does add suspense to older movies in particular. :))
Depending on how NTTD end, I really think Paloma should be bumped up as the lead in Bond 26 opposite the next Bond. Both she and (Bond favourite) Rege-Jean Page are about to appear together in The Gray Man. They'd be ideal for Bond 26....
Totally agree Ana De Armas should have been bumped up to main character (my only fear of NTTD is she'll be be woefully underused) but I doubt she'll appear in another Bond film, let alone the next one in the series.
I also doubt the producers would rip off the casting from The Gray Man
Let's not talk about Page being Bond #7 😅
Replace James Bond?!
But that's Nomi's job. Or maybe Phoebe Waller Bridge :D ;)
Hahahaha got me there mate